Although I’ve discovered Shoebox Zoo just recently, almost 20 years after it originally aired, and despite being a young adult, I think this silly little show has become my favorite of all time. There’s something so charming about it to me that I can’t really put it into words, and even with its numerous flaws I simply couldn’t help but enjoy it purely for how wacky and over the top it all was.

I feel like the show did a genuinely tremendous job at bringing the titular Shoebox Zoo to life, by way of clever editing, superb voice talents and CGI that, in my opinion, still holds up today. I also really enjoyed most of the actors and their performances, with one of my personal favorites being David McKay’s role as McTaggart.

I’ve seen a lot of hate towards Vivien’s performance as the protagonist, Marnie McBride. While I can understand and even somewhat agree with some of the criticisms towards her acting in the show, I personally didn’t find myself having any major problems with it, and thought she did an overall great job playing the role of a girl who needs to grieve with the loss of her recently deceased mother, but gets caught up in this strange scenario that clashes with her everyday life and complicates her situation even further.

Despite this being a kids’ show, I found myself pleasantly surprised as there were some serious topics tackled that I could relate to and/or appreciate, and there were several instances in which something happens that I’d never even think to see in something labeled as a kids’ show. I enjoyed both seasons thoroughly, and even with Season 2’s absence of my absolute favorite character in the show who I shall not name for spoiler reasons, I was overjoyed to see that they were still entirely relevant to the show up until the very end. The ending even made me tear up a little, as I grew really attached to the characters so seeing it end was genuinely quite surreal to me, which has never even once happened to me with any other show I’d watched up until that point.

While I could go on about this show and everything I love about it, I think that it’s best if you’d try watching the show and see if you connect with it. It can be rather hit or miss from what I could gather, so while it was a huge hit for me, that might not be the case for you. That being said, I found myself enjoying just about every second of this show, and though its far from perfect and has aged rather poorly in some aspects, the fact it embraces its wackiness and does so much crazy, nonsensical stuff, along with the fact that I could feel the passion that went into making such a silly concept a reality oozing at just about every moment, made it such a great watch for me.

10/10, Definitely planning to rewatch every once in a while.